As of September 16, 2012, the USPTO is accepting submissions of printed publications by a third party of potential relevance to the patentability of another's claimed invention under the preissuance submission provision. Targeted preissuance submissions by third parties can place the most relevant art into the record of a patent application. In turn, an examiner will be positioned to make the most informed and efficient patentability determination possible, thereby either advancing an application to grant or issuing a rejection to prevent a low quality patent from issuing.

A third party may file a preissuance submission by paper or electronically; submission by fasimile is not permitted. The USPTO encourages the use of electronic submissions via EFS Web for several reasons. First, EFS Web guides a third party through the content requirements for a preissuance submission to ensure that the third party makes a compliant submission. Second, the EFS Web system calculates the timeliness of the submission to determine whether the submission is being made during permitted statutory time window. Lastly, the Office will consider an electronic preissuance submission filed through EFS Web faster because a paper submission must be processed into electronic form before it is provided to the examiner.

To facilitate electronically filing a preissuance submission using EFS Web, the Office has created an EFS Web Quick Start Guide. This guide outlines the steps that a third party must follow to make an electronic submission. Check out the guide to simplify your preissuance submissions: